I LOVED Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad. As heartbreaking as it was, I could not put it down. Not having any knowledge of the author’s story or NYT column, it was an incredible memoir and I was lucky to have downtime this weekend to enjoy it. Amazon, as usual, provides the description better than I could: “In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.” I can’t say that this is a light/fun summer read, but it’s such an immersive and interesting one. I can’t give it enough praise, so I will just say, grab it.

Happy Memorial Day – the weekend I publish my summer reading recommendations and my own list for summer reading.

I have already posted my choices for good summer reads that I have vetted. This post covers those I am looking forward to biting off myself. I couldn’t keep it to ten this year!

Let me know if you have read and enjoyed or hated any of them. They will be packed in my beach bag…

As I do each year, I have listed here my favorites for the first six months of the year so you can easily find them to take to the beach (or to your home if you can’t get to the beach this year). This year was light on 5-star books, but there are a good number of 4.5-star choice to enjoy.

I will post another list of those I am reading this summer – who knows if they are going to be good or not…happy summer, everyone!

Links to read my blog posts are here:

5-star
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Anxious People

4.5-star
This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing
Blood, Bones, and Butter
The Women in Black
The Midnight Library
Leave the World Behind
The Splendid and the Vile
Don’t Look for Me
Eat a Peach
Dear Child
When We Were Orphans

2020’s summer books are here.
2019’s summer books are here.
2018’s summer books are here.
2017’s summer books are here.

Mother May I by Joshilyn Jackson is a decent thriller that will keep you on your toes. Amazon describes: “Growing up poor in rural Georgia, Bree Cabbat was warned that the world was a dark and scary place. Bree rejected that fearful outlook, and life has proved her right. Having married into a family with wealth, power, and connections, Bree now has all a woman could ever dream of. Until the day she awakens and sees someone peering into her bedroom window—an old gray-haired woman dressed all in black who vanishes as quickly as she appears. It must be a play of the early morning light or the remnant of a waking dream, Bree tells herself, shaking off the bad feeling that overcomes her. Later that day though, she spies the old woman again, in the parking lot of her daugh­ters’ private school . . . just minutes before Bree’s infant son, asleep in his car seat only a few feet away, vanishes. It happened so quickly—Bree looked away only for a second. There is a note left in his place, warning her that she is being is being watched; if she wants her baby back, she must not call the police or deviate in any way from the instructions that will follow. The mysterious woman makes contact, and Bree learns she, too, is a mother. Why would another mother do this? What does she want? And why has she targeted Bree? Of course Bree will pay anything, do anything. It’s her child. To get her baby back, Bree must complete one small—but critical—task. It seems harmless enough, but her action comes with a devastating price.” Definitely a summer read, nothing deep here, but a good read nonetheless.

I LOVED Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. I have enjoyed most of his books (A Man Called Ove was a favorite). “Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world. Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.” (Amazon) There are so many quotable moments and such wisdom in this super-fast read. The characters are wonderfully flawed and the story surprises at every turn. In addition, the way it is written is moved and tender at the same time. It’s truly a delight and the escape it provided was much appreciated. Grab it this summer – you won’t be disappointed!

Fiona Davis is always a treat, like book candy. The Lions of Fifth Avenue was no exception. “It’s 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn’t ask for more out of life—her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open. As her studies take her all over the city, she is drawn to Greenwich Village’s new bohemia, where she discovers the Heterodoxy Club—a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women’s rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother. And when valuable books are stolen back at the library, threatening the home and institution she loves, she’s forced to confront her shifting priorities head on . . . and may just lose everything in the process. Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she’s wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes, and books for the exhibit Sadie’s running begin disappearing from the library’s famous Berg Collection. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-averse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage—truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library’s history.” I enjoyed this one, but it was a little more predictable than usual. Worth a read anyway, though.

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker had promise and an intriguing premise. However, it was too slow for me and I almost gave up multiple times. The end was good, but I wouldn’t recommend it based on the slow, slow middle. “Duchess Day Radley is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Rules are for other people. She is the fierce protector of her five-year-old brother, Robin, and the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. And he’s in overdrive protecting Duchess and her brother. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. And Duchess and Walk must face the trouble that comes with his return. We Begin at the End is an extraordinary novel about two kinds of families—the ones we are born into and the ones we create.” (Amazon)

We Run the Tides by Vendela Vida was a quick and OK read, though I really disliked the abrupt ending. Amazon says: “Eulabee and her magnetic best friend, Maria Fabiola, own the streets of Sea Cliff, their foggy oceanside San Francisco neighborhood. They know Sea Cliff’s homes and beaches, its hidden corners and eccentric characters—as well as the upscale all-girls’ school they attend. One day, walking to school with friends, they witness a horrible act—or do they? Eulabee and Maria Fabiola vehemently disagree on what happened, and their rupture is followed by Maria Fabiola’s sudden disappearance—a potential kidnapping that shakes the quiet community and threatens to expose unspoken truths. We Run the Tides is Vendela Vida’s masterful portrait of an inimitable place on the brink of radical transformation. Pre–tech boom San Francisco finds its mirror in the changing lives of the teenage girls at the center of this story of innocence lost, the pain of too much freedom, and the struggle to find one’s authentic self. Told with a gimlet eye and great warmth, We Run the Tides is both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion.” (Amazon) I did not find this to be a “gripping mystery” and, I found it a bit flat in parts. In addition, I had trouble getting into the shoes of the main character. I would give this one a pass. 

I really liked the first Jane Harper book I read, The Dry, but I didn’t love the second one of hers I read, Force of Nature. The Survivors was OK, but not great. It was suspenseful, but parts were dull and the characters weren’t developed particularly well. Amazon’s synopsis: “Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home. Kieran’s parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away…” So, was this worth a read? There are better books out there, but this one wasn’t terrible.